


Guardsman's Ward

by Glacialis



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: F/M, sansan, westeros au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-16
Updated: 2018-11-20
Packaged: 2019-08-24 03:18:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 11,365
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16631897
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Glacialis/pseuds/Glacialis
Summary: Westeros AU in which Sansa is sent to King's Landing as Joffrey's betrothed when she's still an infant, and Ned's killed when she's but four years old.





	1. Chapter 1

She was small enough for him to hide her under his cloak, this girl he had – however reluctantly – sworn to protect. Yet now it was he himself who had stolen her away. And now he was in a dark, cold forest with a grumpy, exhausted horse and a little girl who had never slept outside and who was too young to understand that her life was in danger.

"You have to kiss me goodnight," the tired girl demanded from under his cloak, where she snuggled in his lap for warmth.

"What!?" he asked, not a little shocked.

Stubbornly she squirmed around to face him. "I won't be able to sleep unless you kiss me goodnight."

Those bloody maids, he cursed inwardly and brushed his lips awkwardly against the top of her head.

"No," she protested. "Here," she said and put a tiny chubby finger on her small cherub lips. He stared at the small creature, utterly out of his depth, but as she kept staring expectantly he sighed and relented. He'd snatched her from the only home she'd ever known and - not utterly incapable of pity - he didn't want her life to change too much all at once. If this was what Sansa did before bed, then this was what she'd get. Gingerly he gave her a little peck and grimaced; he'd felt like a great, hulking beast crouching over her tiny form.

"Your face feels funny," she giggled wildly and scrunched up her little nose. He pulled away with a shudder, both disgusted and ashamed to have allowed his scars to touch her, alarmed of having disgusted her. But she pressed her clumsy little hand on his ruined cheek, and then replaced the hand with her own peach soft cheek. He couldn't move, he was shocked stiff as she kept rubbing her face on his dark, gnarled ruin of flesh and bone and went on with the innocence of a child, "But think how funny it would feel to kiss someone with a moustache! Or a great beard, like the King!" But that was her, blessedly blind to the horror that was his face. 

She drew her little fingers along the prickle of beard on the undamaged side of his face and little girl laughter filled the little clearing, even waking up Stranger to look up and snort testily at the commotion.

"Time for bed," he gruffed, baffled and disarmed by the little sprout's lack of reserve. Were all kids like this? Maybe the ones who hadn't been beaten and burned, he thought darkly and scowled.

"You're like a tree," the little girl mumbled sleepily and yawned when he tucked her back into the folds of his cloak. What she meant by that he never learned because in the next moment she was fast asleep. 

Great beard like the King's, he thought. The girl didn't know that the King was dying. 

This whole attempt was madness. He was a fool, he knew it, but the little bundle snuffling sleepily tucked inside his cloak had been the first and only person since he'd been burned to see him for himself and not just as a monster made of scars. True, she had pretty much grown up with him always standing somewhere nearby, but it was still enough to surprise him sometimes how this tiny little person could look him straight in the eye when grown men couldn't. She'd just taken one look at him and decided that this was Sandor, that this was what a sandor looked like, pure and simple.

The one time she had seemed to realize that his face wasn't like everyone else's, she'd asked, "Does it hurt?" with the innocence of a child.

"No," he'd shaken his head. A small lie. The lie had rankled, but she'd been too young for the truth. Bad things happened. Bad things kept happening. But she hadn't needed to know that. Not even when as they spoke her lord father had been stubbornly entangling her whole family into things better left in peace.

"Good," she'd nodded, and dashed away to play, never taking the subject up again, never looking at his scars as if there was anything out of the ordinary about his face.

Fool of a Stark, he cursed, lying down on the too narrow bed roll, still holding the sleeping child to his chest to protect her from the cold. To send a babe hardly able to walk to the Lion's den by herself with no one but an old crone of a septa to look after her. A crone who too was no doubt slain by now.

He had hated his new duties at first, had thought it degrading for a man who had proven himself in many battles to be demoted into playing a nursery maid for the prince's betrothed, a prince's who had barely been weined from the teat himself. Madness, all of it. But the girl had a way of getting to him.

"Where are we going?" she would ask.

"We're going to find your family," he'd answer. She was too young to understand. 

It wasn't the right time.


	2. Chapter 2

They were out of food, again, and luckily far enough from King's Landing that he wouldn't be recognized. Not like this, dirty, hooded and scruffy. It was time to get some news.

"You hide in the thicket here, Sansa," he crooned reassuringly at the suspicious little girl hanging onto the hem of his worn and dirty travelling cloak. "I won't be gone long." 

He parted the bushes and laid a blanket down in the narrow hollow at the root of the impenetrable boughs. Next he wrapped her up in his better cloak and placed her on the blanket. 

"You'll be like a little bird in your nest. Safe and out of sight. But don't sing. You don't want to be heard." The girl shook her head with a fierce determination only a four-year-old can muster. "If anyone comes, just stay right where you are and don't make a sound. Stranger can look after himself."

He'd left just before dawn and was back before midday. Hopefully the girl had slept most of the time, for they'd have to ride on right away.

On his return, he saw Stranger just as he'd left him. Good. "Where's my little bird?" he called under his breath. He tried to make it sound happy and light, as if they'd just played a little game. The grim tidings he carried in his heart were not for her ears. Not now. Not for a long time.

He picked the giggling girl out of the thicket and sat her back in the saddle. Quietly he turned Stranger towards East and kept on giving her the same answer. "We're going to find your family."

Jon Arryn had been the first to die, then Lady Lysa, then Sansa's father, her brother and now the rest of her family, even the bastard. The reach of Lannister gold was long indeed. But there were other lands, with gold of their own. 

Aye. Fuck them. Fuck the Lannisters. Fuck the yellow-bellied lords of the North. Fuck the fat, whoring drunkard of a king and his snake of a wife. No one would hurt Sansa Stark.

 

When they reached the port the girl was starting to look feral. Her clothes were dirty and worn into holes, her hair – shorn short and dark with matted grime – was wild, and her face and hands were streaked with mud. He was no nurse maid, and since she wouldn't sit still he'd quit trying to keep her presentable. Besides, it was better for them both that when they'd seek passage across the sea she looked less like a princess on the run and more like the wretched whelp of a penniless sellsword.

 

She kept asking on the ship, and on the ride, and on the second ship, but less often. Perhaps she was too bewildered to remember anything about where she came from and where he'd said they'd been heading, especially when she wasn't even the same girl anymore. She was no longer a princess, a future queen, Sansa, the betrothed of a prince. She was Lana, then Essah, then Anya, then ten other girls. A new name in each new port and each new ship. And he wasn't himself anymore either. The three dogs on his arms and clothes long painted over or picked out. His prized dog's head helm rusting away in the middle of a thicket somewhere until nothing would be left of the Hound but a slowly disappearing pile of rust coloured flakes.

He tried to learn as much as he could of the new languages he'd need from the sailors on the ships. Room, bed, food, wine, work, coin, bath. He'd never been very clever with much else but his sword, but he persisted, he had no choice. He was responsible for more now than just himself. The reminder of that slept curled up to his side each and every night, asking for stories and songs, only the first of which he was able to give her without wincing.

He bought passage on trading ships, and to avoid going stir crazy worked for their food when he could. That is, when he wasn't spilling the self same food from his guts over the railing and into the roaring sea. Weeks turned into months, ships to other ships, and both his horse and his little ward grew cranky and bored with the endless sway and emptiness of the sea. He was bored too, with lifting and pulling and scrubbing, tugging and heaving, but there was no work for a sword on a ship.

When they begun what he hoped to be their last long ride, she asked once more. He told her now that there were bad men in the Seven Kingdoms, that there was fighting, and a war, and that he needed to hide her away for a time. She wept a little then for the family she'd never really known, but children are resilient and her sorrow didn't last when strange sights and foreign birds, trees, flowers and animals caught her attention as they rode by. She was still so small that she lived only for today. And he wanted her to have that for as long as possible, no one would burn her innocence away at age 6. He would make bloody sure of that.

He found a road and rode inland. They were farther from Westeros than he'd known existed, but ships still brought strangers. And rumours. They followed a huge, fast-flowing river for three whole weeks, riding past town after town, until they found a large city by a lake so big they couldn't see the other shore of it. But a lake it was for the water was fresh and not salty. Stranger drank his fill and Sandor and Sansa both bathed. He tried to wash their clothes some, but they were in such a state it was a better idea to replace them altogether.

There were fishermen, farmers, goatherds, old men and young men about, girls with baskets, women, boys, old crones, all dark-haired and tanned. The people went on with their business, unnerved by his sword or his mail or the huge, black horse. This place hasn't known trouble for a long time, he thought with satisfaction, if the smallfolk could afford to feel so safe.


	3. Chapter 3

Their rooms were small. He slept in the front room, she behind a door in a long, narrow attic chamber with a slanting ceiling. Alone he might have found it hard to find a place to stay, but exhausted, sleeping Sansa curled up in his arms was enough to draw eyes from his ruin of a face.

He'd found work as a guard in the house of a merchant, and their widowed landlady, Lesira, who also kept a shop downstairs, looked after Sansa for a little coin while he was at work. He'd spun her a story that Sansa – well, Ynna now – was an orphan, his ward. That he had worked for her family until her parents had been killed when their home town was pillaged. Easy enough to believe, he thought, the world being what it was.

On the road and on the ships she'd gotten used to sleeping beside or in the same cabin with him. For the first weeks in their new home he slept on his straw mattress on the floor of her narrow chamber until she felt safe enough to sleep in her room alone.

Despite at first hanging onto him and crying when ever he went out of sight, with time the girl settled in well. She took to Lesira and in just six short months she spoke the language better than he did.

Passing through the bazaar on his way to and from the merchant's house, he picked up little gifts for her. A tiny flute. A carved box. A doll. Little pots, and seeds for pretty blooms. Cakes and fruit and honeyed nuts. He read to her songs, stories and histories from books in the common tongue he'd picked up from the ports they'd stopped at on their way. Though they only spoke it with each other, he didn't want her to grow up not knowing her own language. And maybe a small part of him wanted something to hold on too from a place now long gone.

Lesira was teaching her to sew and mend, but her efforts were still clumsy at best and the only things he'd allow her to mend were their nightshirts which no one would ever see but they themselves. And mend them she did, even the parts that needed no mending, but with time the stitches lined and evened up and he allowed her to work on their other clothes as well.

On his days off he'd take her to the bazaar or packed a lunch for them and rode Stranger into the forests and hills and distant beaches of the lake. She loved the water now, and the little treasures she found from the shore. Shells, castaway objects brought in by the waves, bright, pretty stones and chalky stones one could use to draw on other stones.

Whenever they were out together, he noted, the faces that looked at his size and his disfigured face with horror when he walked alone, melted into soft smiles when the little bird was perched chattering on his shoulders or walking beside him, her tiny hand clutched around one or two big clumsy fingers, crying out and chittering with glee at all the exciting sights and sounds. With his raven hair and tanned skin Sandor melted into the crowds, only his grey eyes gave him away. But Sansa, with her blue eyes, auburn hair and pale skin too sensitive for the harsh sun, stood out in this land of bronzed, dark haired people. However, in the brightly coloured clothes and elaborate womens headdresses of the style everyone else around them wore, they looked less and less like strangers with each passing year.

He thought of telling her sometimes, but she was still too young to understand. It wasn't the right time.


	4. Chapter 4

Unlike Sandor might have expected, a little girl wasn't that much of a nuisance. When Sansa was 7, Lesira started refusing his money. She claimed Sansa had learned enough to make herself useful. When Sansa was 9, she started paying her a small wage.

Her room looked like a proper little maiden's bedchamber. Pots of flowers on the window sill, hangings on the walls, shells threaded on string hanging from the ceiling. Toys, trinkets, brushes and cushions, shelves and small tables. All she thought to ask, he got for her. And some things she didn't ask, like a silken shift and a necklace of turqoise stones when the dice favored him. She did not remember the affluence of the palace and didn't know to miss it. Her earliest memories now weren't of the palace but of the forest, of Stranger and of him.

He was captain of the merchant's guard now, and they could have afforded better rooms, but it was the only home the poor girl had ever known, and she wouldn't hear of moving. She still had nightmares from time to time about long rides, cold, dark forests and swaying ships.

He didn't hide from her. Not anymore. When he came home he tied his hair back. When it was hot he went shirtless. She was used to his scars, all of them. Even the ones within. The ones that made him lash out for no reason from time to time, even at her.

When he drank she left him to it and didn't make him feel guilty for it. And sometimes, when she thought he was dead to this world, she snuck to linger by his bed at night and stroked her small hand over his brow and kissed his temple. It was hard to pretend to sleep when she first did this, he didn't like people touching his scars, not even her.

"Tell me about my family," she would ask from time to time. "You served them, you must've known them well."

He went through what little he'd heard of them and tried to make it all sound plausible. An honoured lord father, a strong and beautiful lady mother, a brave and noble brother, and finally, her mother's hope, a little sister. The bastard he left out. He didn't want to have to explain that to her. And what did it matter now anyway. They were little more than bedtime stories, sometimes true, most often not, retellings of stories he'd heard, only with her brother or sister as the clever little heroes or her parent's as the wise rulers who kept their people safe.

He thought of telling her, almost every day, but she was so innocent and happy. It wasn't the right time.


	5. Chapter 5

She was looking more like a little woman every day. Innocent. Serene. Beautiful without even realizing it. She weaved baskets, painted belts, beads, toys and cups, embroidered and sew everything from dainty slippers to sturdy leather jerkins. In a few years she'd become quite the little craftswoman. 

The weather was generally warm but every now and then bitter winds and even snow came down from the mountains far to the North. Sansa knitted mittens and gloves and scarves to keep him warm. She even sew leather on the gloves' palms so he could still grip his sword. Soon she had orders from other guards who wanted gloves just like his. Clever little bird, he smiled as she worked at their little table at nights.

She was innately modest, but quietly proud of the amount of independence an income of her own, albeit small, brought her. By and by it wasn't just him bringing her gifts anymore. When he opened his trunk he found a new tunic or a pair of leather breeches that sat just right, socks soft as silk or a new scabbard for his sword which she'd painted herself. Things she'd made for him with her own precious little hands. She sew curtains for their little windows, embroidered small tapestries for their walls, painted their simple furniture, stenciled a pattern of vines, birds and flowers on the walls of her room, and a board of horses, shields and ornaments around the main room. It was starting to look like a real home, a notion which was as new to both of them.

When extreme heat or cold made his scars crack and weep, she dabbed at them with a clean, wet cloth and mixed ointments to hasten their healing and ease the pain. And he found himself walking past the taverns, whorehouses and winesinks more often to spend the night at home with her.

They were a family of sorts. Not sister and brother, nor father and daughter. Cousins, maybe. Just something. For they both felt they belonged. Here. To each other. Together. At least for now.

She knew the Old Gods and the Seven only from books and his stories, but she did pray sometimes, probably to one of Lesira's strange gods. The god of colours maybe, or the god of mist. The god of chaos he could understand, but mist was stretching it a bit.

One thing the little bird had never learned was how to cook. He still prepared their meals, just as he'd done when she was too young to know how. She knew now. She'd watched him do it for a sufficient number of years but she preferred to sit at the table and do her mending while he stocked the pot, and he told her of his day and she of hers. It was a thing he'd come to look forward to, a peaceful, warm, domestic scene, the like of which he'd never known growing up without a mother in a keep terrorized by his monster of a brother. And she neither, he suddenly realized. She had not been given the chance to grow up surrounded by her family. She'd been sent South to the court when King Robert came up with his grand idea which Lord Eddard was in no position to refuse. Poor little bird. But she was alive, wasn't she. Unlike the rest of the Starks.

Sweetness was in her nature, but growing up with him – though it had but few advantages – had made her blunt and honest. She didn't lie.

He was no septa – even though he had tried to reign in his swearing when she was little – yet still she managed to turn out gentle and sweet, so corteous in fact that sometimes he snapped at her. She would need to grow some claws before suitors would start pestering her left and right. She was a wolf after all. Or had been. Once.

But she was no lady now. She slept on a straw mattress, dressed in linen instead of silk, wore shells and painted beads around her neck instead of silver and jewels, and ate fish and barley more often than meat. And thought herself happy.

He wondered briefly what she would be like now had things not gone so wrong for her, had Prince Joffrey not been a bastard, had she grown up to be a great lady, a princess and a queen. They would have made a pretty little liar of his gentle, smart little bird, a pretty little liar with a blank face and a chirp of endless empty courtesies. He'd seen enough of the court to know that. 

But she was a lady no more. He had struck her down, made a commoner out of her. But maybe it wasn't all for the worse. She was freer for it. Free to laugh and fly. Free to speak her mind. Free to make her own choices.

On the nights he wasn't on duty they'd sit in the garden behind Lesira's house, sitting on a stone bench or lying on his old cloak side by side, listening to the night birds and looking at the stars, and when she would ask he'd tell her stories from back home. And in those moments, peaceful and calm, he sometimes felt happy too.

"Tell me about them," she asked again one night when he came home to find her sitting in the garden. "Tell me about Westeros."

He still told her the same stories he used to tell her when she was little. He'd told her about the dragonlords, of maesters in their citadel, words flown across the land by ravens, of the Kings of Winter, of a wall made of ice, taller than any castle. He'd told her about children of the forest, the Old Gods and faces carved on trees – fairytales to Westermen like himself but honoured in the North. Now he told her about her aunt Lyanna, so fiercely beautiful that a war was fought over her, of her uncle Brandon and how Lady Catelyn married young Lord Eddard after Brandon died.

"Were they happy?" she asked.

"Who?"

"My parents."

"Uhm..."

"I wouldn't like to marry like that," she announced before he'd had time to form a reply.

"Like what?"

"Like my mother. To marry some stranger, someone I don't know at all."

"Then you don't have to," he said and smiled.

"Truly?" she beamed.

"Truly."

Next thing he knew she had her arms clutched around his middle, her head burrowed into his shirt.

"I love you, Sandor."

After a moment of confusion he put his arm around her and murmured, "I love you too, little bird."

It was a new thing. Something she'd learned playing with her little friends perhaps. Something families said to each other. He hadn't said it to anyone since his sister died, but saying it back to Sansa felt right somehow. Wasn't she a little like his sister after all? A young girl he needed to protect? Only this time, he wouldn't fuck up. No monster would ever get close enough to harm Sansa.

"Let's go inside, girl. You're just a breath away from falling asleep."

"I would like to fall asleep here," she said timidly and looked up at him from where she was leaning into him. "Just this once. Please? I'd like to fall asleep to the stars and the sounds of leaves and birds and the smell of night here in the garden. You could... Maybe you could carry me up after I'm asleep, so when I'm in my bed it would feel like I'm still here. Could you do that?"

"Aye. I can do that." He sat back to make room for her to lay down on the bench and rest her head on his thigh. "You sleep, little bird," he said in the gruff yet kind way he only used with her. "I'll watch over you. I always do."

"Kiss me goodnight?" she lilted in her usual way and tilted her head towards him. Sandor crouched and kissed her on her forehead. "That's not how it's done," she complained and looked up with a knitted brow.

"It is now," he replied. "You're not a little girl anymore."

"Oh." The sigh was sad, disappointed, and somewhat embarrassed. She didn't know what she'd done wrong, and he wasn't man enough to explain. With a confused look she stared up at him, until she turned to her side and buried her face into his tunic and closed her eyes. One day he would have to explain to her about men and women, but it wasn't a discussion he was looking forward to. It's a mother's job, he thought grimly. But she had no mother. Not anymore. She only had him.

When he lowered her on her bed later, he wanted to kiss her hair like he sometimes did. But she wasn't his to kiss. She wasn't a little girl anymore.

After that she didn't ask him for a kiss goodnight again.


	6. Chapter 6

"So I'm a woman grown now?" she asked, her eyebrow raised in a curious quirk. Gone was the hysteria of her waking up with blood in her bed. Gone was his panic about what the hell to do about it. Now she was cool as breezes, assessing her newfound maturity.

"According to the old customs of Westeros, yes," he affirmed warily, knowing she had something in her mind. Here they allowed their children a longer innocence, for which he was grateful, but she remembered his stories too well to have missed this juicy detail.

"And you served my family?"

He shrugged. It was the story he'd told everyone then, the story she'd grown up with and which had mingled with what he'd kept telling her on their journey to this place. "You plan on giving me orders now?" he asked, unable to keep a straight face at her weak attempt at hawtiness. "Fine. But only this one time, mind you. What would you have me do," he asked, and – with a grin she'd know was meant to mock her – added with a little bow, "my lady?"

"I would have you tell me all that you've kept from me 'til now. Tell me everything about my family. We're not going to find them, are we?"

It wasn't a question; it was a statement, a blow that struck him hard right in the gut. She was no fool. He'd known this day was coming, so he did tell, as gently as he could, though it didn't much lessen the blow. He told her of her father, lord Eddard Stark of Winterfell, of Jon Arryn Hand of the King and how they'd been betrayed to their deaths, of a tainted bond between brother and sister, of scheming and grasping, of houses willing murder and shame to their name in order to crawl a little upwards in the cess pit that was nobility.

He hadn't known to expect the violent force of her grief to learn of the deaths of people she only knew from stories he'd told her. She grabbed at him and refused to let go, mewling and weeping in his arms late into the night, letting out a shrill keening wail when ever he tried to let go of her.

In the morning he had to leave her. He was sorry for it, but he slipped away from her grasp without waking her.

When he came back from work, she was still in her bed. She hadn't dressed or eaten, and she'd been crying again. When he sat on her bedside, she grabbed at him again, and only reluctantly allowed him to prise her fingers from his tunic when he promised to return as soon as he'd washed up and eaten something. He fed her some bred and fruits he still couldn't remember the names of. She ate like a little bird, accepting the bites from his hand, but not without looking at him accusingly, as if he made her do something she'd rather not. Sandor tried to return to his own bed after sundown, but she wouldn't let go of him, and again they fell asleep on her bed holding each other.

For a whole week he held her through the nights and coaxed her to eat bite by bite. So much a child still, he thought. Had he not taken her away, the blood would have marked her wedding to the bastard prince. He shuddered at the idea. But their old homeland was nothing but distant rumours now, and all those of trouble and death. A torn land awash in blood. And if the wild tales were true, soon to be schorched by dragonflame as well.

After the week she was crying less, and sleeping more soundly. He told her he would be sleeping in his own bed again. She did obey, and dragged her feet into her little chamber when it was time to sleep. She made her opinion known, however, and it made him wonder. Surely she must see they couldn't be sharing a bed? She was a woman flowered, he thought ruefully, she'd need to stop acting like a child.

When that storm was over, he told her of the rumours, of a new warrior queen and her dragons. But their lives were here now, and Westeros nothing but a distant memory, a land of old tales. She didn't believe in dragons any more than he did. He'd raised her better than that. The girl was no fool.


	7. Chapter 7

Something changed in their home after the dark, long buried past had been brought out into the light. There was no laughter or pleasant evenings spent in the garden, no kinship or sweet domesticity. She was moody as often as not. And he found himself drinking more often again. 

One morning, after a long night spent in a nearby winesink, he woke up to find that he was in his bed and the little bird was coiled around him like a vine. Her head on his chest, her arms around him, her leg resting over his thighs. 

The material of her nightshift was so fine as to make it almost see-through. He could see and feel the swell of her breasts as she breathed deep, her nipples a darker shadow against the almost sheer fabric. And even through her smallclothes he could feel the heat of her sex pressing against his side.

The little bird wasn't a little bird anymore, she was a young woman. And when he felt himself grow hard, the reaction, involuntary as it was, filled him with a most acute self-loathing. Dirty old dog, that was all he was. All he'd ever be.

For the first few times she did this he slipped out of bed without a word, but when she kept doing it he was forced to take it up with her.

"You're too old to climb into my bed, girl," he growled. "This has to stop."

But it didn't stop. She did it every time he passed out drunk, and so he had to stop drinking, which – as she didn't stop deliberately winding him up every chance she got - made him even more short-tempered than usual with her and his men alike.

Each time he woke with her by his side, he slid from bed trying his best not to wake her. He didn't want to embarrass the poor girl, it wasn't her fault she had no one in this world but a scarred old mutt. There was no one else for her to clung to when she felt in need of comfort. But come evening he would sit her down and explain again and again, no matter how her behaviour tried his patience, that she was far too old to creep into his bed, that it wasn't right. And she would blush and mutter her apologies to the floor only to do it again the next time he was too drunk to notice.


	8. Chapter 8

She had always been good. She'd been obedient, sweet, respectful, everything a girl should be. Until now. Her moods were getting as bad as his, sometimes even worse, and it wasn't just when her blood was on her but all the time. More often than not he left for work fuming after yet another pointless argument. Yet after a fight she'd be waiting for him in the evening, a fervent bundle of teary apologies, pouncing on him as soon as he opened the door to their rooms. For a few days she'd be herself again, his sweet little bird, until something he did or said set her off again and it was screaming and crying and broken pottery and shouting all over again.

"Gods, I swear one of these days I'll dunk her in the horse trough to cool down," he huffed at Lesira on the stairs one such morning.

She laughed. "In a mood again, is she?"

"Ready for a husband, that one is. And a firm one at that. _I_ sure don't know what to do with her anymore."

"Well, let me take her around a little. She's such a beautiful girl, I don't doubt that she can make a very good match. A merchant maybe, or even a builder – there's wealth to be made in building houses." 

"Aye, you do that." He tried to keep the irritation from his voice, but Lesira was nothing if not shrewd.

"Yet she may have ideas of her own. They often do," she said, her tone a knowing prod and an earnest warning at the same time. "Have you tried asking--"

"Ha!" he interrupted her with a dark bark of laughter. "And have her throw the new water jug at me as well? No. The first was enough. With the rate I've been carrying coin to the potter down the street lately, he can buy his youngest boy an apprenticeship soon. His girls too, if I won't find a husband for that one soon!" he exclaimed and nodded his head back up the stairs to indicate Sansa.

"The next cups and plates will be bloody wooden," he murmured angrily to himself as he walked out. "We'll see how she likes _that_."

Lesira gave his back a long-suffering look. "Fool of a man," she scoffed, and shook her head, sighing. "And fool of a girl." How long were they going to keep this up?


	9. Chapter 9

"Sandor! Come dance with me!" she shouted when he opened the door to their rooms.

"What's this, little bird?" he queried warily. She was sitting at the table with a half-empty flagon of wine.

"Oh, don't be grumpy!" she whined with irritation, rose unsteadily to her feet and threw her arms breathlessly around his neck. "I so wish to dance. Show me how they dance in Westeros. Please, teach me."

"Sansa, you're drunk," he growled, untangled her arms from his neck and set to removing his plate and mail and the sweaty tunic beneath.

The stern remark shut her up for a moment until he poured water into the basin and started to bathe.

"You're beautiful," she gasped from behind him, mouth open in a hazy, drunken gaze.

"Dirty, sweaty and tired is what I am," he snapped. "And apparently sober too now you've drank all the wine."

"Not all," she pleaded, her wine-laced exuberance stifled by his barks and bitter mood.

"Go to bed, Sansa, you can hardly stay on your feet."

"Yes!" she shouted, elated once more. "To bed!" And she looked at him with a delighted, dreamy grin and let herself fall back on his mattress with a loud thump.

"No! Bloody hells, the Others take you, girl. In your own fucking bed." After months of her antics and ploys he was really getting fed up with this.

"You're no fun Sandor," she accused with an injured whine from under his blanket where she'd already burrowed herself.

He balled his fists and considered dragging her up and into her chamber but decided against it. He was too old to play games. "Fine," he spat. "Sleep where you want."

 

"Sandor..." her little mumble came from behind him after he'd had his dinner and sat nursing a cup of wine at the table. He grunted to let her know he'd heard her.

"You would never force me to marry, would you?"

"No, little bird," he sighed. "I would never force you. You should know better than that."

"Good."

"Good night, Sansa."

"Good night, Sandor."

With that he drank the cup empty and crossed the floor to make room for himself among the scented sheets and embroidered cushions that filled the little bird's little nest.


	10. Chapter 10

True to her word Lesira had taken Sansa out with her and like she'd predicted it wasn't long until men started sniffing around the girl. She was a beauty after all. But instead of getting excited his little bird met the whole thing with a grim resignation. She didn't laugh anymore. She was just sad and sat alone in her room as often as not. She refused to talk about it with him, but he could hear her weeping at night, but she didn't come to him with her worries anymore. She didn't even get angry with him like she used to. It seemed as if nothing mattered to her anymore, as if she had given up. But of what, he couldn't understand. Then, Lesira told him that Sansa had received an offer of marriage. And a good one, from what the old woman told him. It wasn't the life she'd been born for, but closer to it than a cramped den of exile with an old scarred sellsword.

"I heard you had an offer," Sandor began, serving stew to the listless little bird. There was no needlework scattered on the table. Sansa had been just sitting there, absently staring at the floor. "Lesira says he's a," Sandor cleared his throat, "a fine young man, and is to inherit his father's business one day." The words felt bitter in his mouth, but he'd always known this day would come. "I have put aside enough to buy all the maiden's things that are customary here. And more. You won't go to your husband a pauper. And these are yours too," he said and gave her the small bundle of silver necklaces and ancient jewelled rings he'd taken from her room at the palace the night he'd taken her. He'd kept them hidden, kept them safe.

When he looked at her he was shocked to see tears in her eyes. "You promised me you wouldn't marry me off to some stranger!" she yelled and threw the silver and stones at him as if they were naught but trinkets. Before he had the chance to stop her she'd locked herself into her room.

"Sansa, please open this," he pleaded, but all he got from her were the sounds of her weeping. "Seven fucking hells," he hissed, cursing the day he'd fitted in that lock.

 

She locked herself in her room for days. She came out while he was at work but when he came back she refused to see him or talk to him. Time passed and she'd sent no reply to the proposal.

"Sansa," he begged through the door, once again. She would have to give the boy and his family an answer soon. "Sansa, please. Talk to me, little bird." His own voice felt strange, he couldn't even recognize it. He was used to his sneers and barks but he was speaking so softly now. Something only the little bird could make him do.

Finally he heard a scuffle and she picked out the latch in the door. 

"May I come in?" he asked, as she still hadn't opened the door. She gave no answer so he pushed the door open gently and looked in. "Sansa?"

She was sitting on the bed, her eyes red and swollen, her hair hanging as lank as his own, no trace of a smile on her beautiful lips.

"Please, little bird. Speak to me. What's wrong?"

"Maybe I don't want a husband!"

"Well you can't stay with me forever."

"Why not?" 

Oh that blessed innocence, he thought.

"Well... Don't you want all that," he sighed. "A home, children, happiness?"

"Yes," she said, but her voice was weak and she didn't sound convinced.

"Of course I won't make you marry against your will. I just, well, I thought you were happy with this. Is there someone else then that you'd prefer?" She nodded shyly but wouldn't meet his eyes. "Well... You could have told me, Sansa. You should have known I'd never force you into anything. Tell me, what is he? What does he do?"

"He's a guardsman."

"Don't tell me he's one of the louts I work with!? I'll kill him!" he shouted, his hands already bunched into tight fists. Then he remembered himself and grunted, trying for a more patient tone. "Well... Where does he live? Does he have a family? Can he afford a wife? How long have you known him? Is he good to you?" A guardsman, he sighed inwardly. She could've done so much better. These rooms had been fine for the two of them, but how did one house children on a simple guardsman's pay.

"He's honest and kind and strong and brave."

Another grunt. "How old is he?"

She looked him over. "As old as you are."

Sandor shook with rage. If it's any of my men, I'll kill him first, he thought, barely containing his rage. Sansa was too good for those whoring bastards.

"Sansa..." he shook his head, furious at the thought of some vile old man lurking around his precious, beautiful little bird. "Are you sure this is what you want?"

"Yes."

He sighed. "What's his name?"

"Sandor..." There was a lilt in her tone, a plea of sorts.

He kept staring at her. "Well, what's his name? Out with it."

"Sandor." Her tone was more firm now, but she didn't go on.

"Are you going to tell me or not?" He was getting angry again, staring at the little bird with a knitted brow and his fists clenched. He ached to hit something. Some _one_. Specifically, a certain guardsman.

"I already told you." He saw there was a hint of a smile on her face, a smile she was trying to bite back.

"No you--" he started and stopped abruptly. He looked at her, horrified. "No!" he shouted. "No!"

"Sandor..." she tried and reached for him but he jerked back.

The thought of her with a man burned him, but this – like the mornings when he woke up with her in his bed – was a thought he couldn't even – no – he just couldn't go there. "Sansa, please. You have to stop this. I'm twice as old as you are. And you're my ward!"

"Sandor..." she rose from the bed. He could see the way she moved, purposeful, soft and seductive. She was trying to unman him, to lure him in. This couldn't be. The little bird. No. Just, no. Not with these filthy, clumsy paws. He took a step back and crashed into a shelf holding her trinkets. They crashed down to the floor in a big rattle of noise, a racket and a mess which neither of them had the presence of mind to notice just then.

"No," he said. His voice was choked, almost pleading. The thoughts he'd had on the mornings he woke up with wine sweat, with the little bird curled to his side in a thin shift that showed him everything, every womanly curve, the shade of her nipples, the triangle-shaped shadow at the crux of her thighs. Those moments he'd buried somewhere in the deep, deep dark of his soul. There was a wrongness there, a wrongness so scorching there was no overcoming it. And yet here she was, trying to come to him, to touch him. She wanted to pull him down there, into that ugly dark. He couldn't do that. Not to her. Not to the little bird.

Finally he couldn't take it anymore, couldn't take her eyes, tearing up, her mouth sad and shocked, her shoulders slumped, her first sobs, disheartened and broken. Why did life have to be like this, that one always hurt the ones one cared about the most.


	11. Chapter 11

For weeks Sansa visited Sandor day after day at his rooms at the merchant's grand manse. She was a familiar face to Sandor's men, and many of them gave her a welcome far warmer than that she received from the man himself, who was hardly able to say two words to her. She'd told him she'd refused the proposal and would refuse each and every one she'd get. "I told you I wouldn't marry a stranger, and you promised me I wouldn't have to!" she hissed at him, trying to get his temper to flare when nothing else worked. "You promised to protect me, and then you leave me!" she shouted at him, knowing full well that her words could be heard all the way out into the training yard, but she didn't care. If she embarrassed him in front of his men, he deserved it. But time and again her words were as powerless to move him as everything else had been.

Finally she couldn't take it anymore, the distance, the awkwardness, his eyes skitting away from hers when ever she tried to hold their grey gaze. 

"This ends now!" she huffed and sat on his bed. "I won't go away until you talk to me!"

True to her word she sat there for four days while Sandor, more bad tempered now than ever, slept with his men.

After the fifth day he gave up. He sent her a bath and brought her a clean set of clothes he'd fetched from home. "Get cleaned, eat something and we'll talk."

He saddled Stranger, as old now as Sandor felt he was himself, and helped Sansa into the saddle. They rode into the woods, into a little hidden glade just by the lakeshore they'd often visited when Sansa was younger. She didn't say a word during the entire ride, and stood stiff and still on the soft grass, looking out to the lake just as wordless.

"Sansa," he groaned, approaching her uncertainly. "Please. If you think you want me, it's only because I'm all you know."

"I know plenty, Sandor!" she shouted vehemently, seething with all the anger she'd kept bottled up during the past days and the long ride. "My life doesn't stop when you go to work! I have friends all along our street. I know just about every merchant in this town, every farmer and stallholder in the bazaar, their children, their families, every man you work with, their wives, their children, people who come to the store. I grew up here. And there are good people here, which you would know if you bothered to look up every once in a while, if you weren't so determined to bark at everyone.

And if you think this was the first offer I've had, think again! I could have been married ten times over by now! Ask Lesira! The first offers came long before my blood."

Sandor was shocked. It was the first time he realized that she had a life of her own here, that she was more than his ward, that she wasn't just a maiden in a shabby sort of tower that he needed to keep safe and shelter from the world.

"Sandor...." she relented, her voice almost pleading now. "I don't want to fight. But I'm going to, if you persist in trying to push me away. This is my home. _You_ are my home. And I've loved you for as long as I've known what love is, even before I knew. How can you hate yourself so much that you can't see the man I see, the man who has always been there for me, your honesty, your loyalty, your bravery and kindness, the sacrifices you made to keep me safe. Do not think my love is a simple result of gratitude. It's not. I have seen men aplenty, but no other I could love and respect as I do you. You are not all that I have, Sandor. But you are all that I want. The only one I want. If you don't love me, then tell me, and I will learn to live with it. But please, please don't push me away just because you can't let go of some deranged hatred you have for yourself."

"But you're my ward, Sansa. People would think I took advantage."

"You wouldn't be the first man to marry their ward, believe me. Lesira told me it happens all the time."

"Seven hells, Sansa," he groaned, burying his face into his hands. "You've talked to her about this? When?"

"Oh, I think it was some years ago now," she smirked with mock innocence.

"You'll be the death of me, girl," he groaned and sat down heavily on the grass. Did she know what she was asking? Did she even know what husbands and wives did? He sure as hells had not enlightened her about _that_. "What am I going to do with you."

Sansa recognized a victory when she saw one, and scampered to kneel beside him. She leaned herself against his shoulder, relishing in the bulk and warmth of him that she'd missed for so, so long. Then she whispered. "You're going to wed me. So that I can share your bed every night for the rest of my life. So that I can kiss you and touch you anytime I want, any way I want, any _where _I want. I have waited a long time for this, Sandor," she continued, her voice growing huskier. "And I know you want me too. Mornings aren't the only times you grow hard, you know."__


	12. Chapter 12

The night was dark, as it always was here. Someone had moved out and they now had a larger set of rooms at the back of the house with more privacy and an extra room for a nursery in the future. Lesira hadn't mentioned the empty apartment before, and Sandor had a feeling she'd been keeping it for them.

Their new bed, his bride's gift to her, had a feather-stuffed mattress, just like a lady should have.

Yet for having chased and teased him with such tenacity for the past weeks, the little bird was curiously shy now their wedding night was upon them. Gone was the hunger, gone were the needy squirms and whines and the pleas for him to kiss, suck, touch and bite her stronger, harder, more. She'd stepped into the other room to change into a night shift, and now emerged breathless and too nervous to look up at him.

"Not having second thoughts, are you?" he asked, more to tease her than out of any real concern. Briskly she shook her head but still wouldn't look up. He went to her then and put his arms around her. With a grateful sigh she buried her face into his chest. "Are you scared?"

"I don't know," she whispered, truthfully. It was all she'd dreamt of for so long but now the thought of it suddenly felt so overwhelming she could hardly stand straight. Luckily he was there for her to lean onto and draw strength from. Like he had always been. Like he would always be now. The thought made her smile. 

She started kissing his chest through his shirt, feeling the warmth of his skin even through the linen. 

"We won't do anything you don't feel ready for."

"Thank you," she sighed, and lifted the hem of his fine wedding tunic. He could feel her now, dragging her lips, cheek and nose up and down his chest and stomach. "You smell nice," she murmured, and he could feel her smile against his skin, feel in his arms as the tenseness in her body melted away. "Take me to your bed, Sandor," she asked. " _Our_ bed. Carry me. Like you carried me from the garden. I've dreamt of that night for so, so long."

When he lifted her into his arms, she curled into him, hands around his neck, face nuzzled into the crook of his neck. She was breathing in his scent again, with deep, satisfied draws of breath, and it felt strangely erotic to have her, Sansa, his little bird, filling herself with the scent of his skin.

When he set her down on the soft mattress she finally looked up and smiled at him, a dazed, sleepy thing it was. "Hello husband," she lilted. "Care to join me?" Her sheer shift revealed just enough of her beautiful body to take his breath from him. In mute wonder he circled the bed and lay down beside her, reaching a hesitant hand to trace the length of her from her neck to her thigh.

"Please," she asked softly. "I want to see you." He allowed her to help him out of his clothes, every last one. Her hands traced all of him, her eyes taking him in in an entirely new way. His body was nothing new to her after living together for all those years, but since she flowered he had tried to shield her modesty more than before. There was one part of him though, which she'd never seen.

"Is it always like that?" she asked, eyes wide.

"No, not always." She'd learn soon enough how he wilted when satisfied.

"Can I touch it?"

"Gently, little bird." She reached her little hand and poked his glans. She giggled when his cock bobbed stiffly from side to side. "It's not a toy, girl," he growled, but he'd lost long ago the ability to scare her with his snarls and barks. She knew him too well. But all that left his mind when she opened her palm and grazed it's soft, sensitive skin along his shaft, up and down, pushing gently against the soft tip and then grasping her deft fingers around his base, squeezing slightly, feeling the hardness under the soft, velvety skin.

He was groaning violently with her every move, and she seemed to like it, seemed to enjoy his helplessness under her lightest touch. She lay down beside him and rested her head on his stomach, watching as her own hand played with his cock. She rubbed her face against his soft belly, moving lower. She liked to feel things – him – with her face and mouth, but to feel this... 

He felt her breath closing in, and then her lips. Her tongue was tasting him.

"Gods, Sansa!" he choked through his teeth.

She kissed her way all the way down along his shaft, then scratched her nose when his hairs tickled her there. He wondered briefly should he stop her, was this a proper thing for a lady to do. Then again, as he was never to take a whore again, it would be nice if she was willing to give her mouth to him as well. Seven hells, if she kept this up he'd spend himself before he even got to her.

"Sansa," he groaned.

"Shh," she whispered. He felt her dabbing at the wetness oozing from his tip with her finger, smoothing it over his glans. Leaning down, taking him into her mouth. "Fuck!" he groaned as she slid more of him into her mouth. Tentatively. Playing, trying, testing.

"Sansa," he groaned again, more urgently now. He wanted so hard to push, just push. To fuck her sweet little mouth with abandon. He was losing all control. 

She allowed him to take her hands and pull her to sit on top of him.

"Did you not like it?" she asked.

"Loved it, little bird. Too much, in fact."

She grinned. 

He took the hem of her shift and looked to her for permission before tugging it over her head. She was gorgeous, a goddess, the Maiden made flesh. She hadn't put any smallclothes on under the shift and there was nothing between them now. He took her body in with his gaze and his hands, reaching ever upwards. Her thighs, her arse, her hips, her waist, stomach, breasts, shoulders, neck. He lingered there and felt her jolt. He already knew a few of her sensitive spots and couldn't wait to discover more. 

"On your back, girl," Sandor whispered hoarsely, and Sansa complied, as aroused as she was nervous. He kept touching her, all over, everywhere, kissing, sucking, massaging. 

"More," she begged now, her voice little more than a strangled whine. "Please."

Slowly he moved his palm to her lower belly and held it there until he was satisfied with the urgency of her need. Then – relishing in her breathy gasps – he dragged a finger down her slit and wiggled it at her opening. She moaned loudly and jerked. Her moans were incoherent. Her hips were moving, pushing against his hand, instinctively aching and seeking to have something inside her. 

"Shh," he shushed and slowly fed her his finger.

"More, more," she groaned, and he added another finger and began moving them steadily in and out. She was sweating and squirming now, no more shy, no more scared. He leaned down and spread her folds with his other hand, running his nose up and down the source of the scent that was driving him wild. When he reached the top she jerked and cried out. He repeated his last move with the same results. He'd heard of a spot like this, but hadn't cared enough with whores to learn more. He cared now. He drew back to look at her, at a tiny nub rising from the pink flesh. He gave it a kiss and she shuddered. He kissed it more deeply and she whimpered so sweetly that he shuddered as well.

She was welling up with wetness, his fingers making a slick squishing noise coming and going inside of her.

"Don't stop," she begged with her voice breaking. "Whatever it is you're doing, don't stop."

He took a more comfortable position and set to work kissing, licking and rubbing at her little nub. Her hips were moving of their own accord, riding the fingers inside her and pushing her slit into his face. He added a third finger – he had to stretch her more if she was to be able to take his cock – but she merely moaned as if it gave her more pleasure instead of pain.

"Sansa," he groaned, losing every tether he had on himself. "Please." Her reply was to tug him up on top of her. She moaned deep from her throat when the tip of his cock butted against her slick, wet slit.

"Please be gentle," she asked and kissed him. Her voice had been a trembling little whine.

"I'll do my best, little bird. But it's still going to hurt. I'm sorry. It can't be helped."

She nodded and relaxed as much as she could, resting her legs wide on the mattress and smiling up at him, apprehension showing through the attempt at a brave face. Her long arms sneaked around him and she held him to her, not quite reaching his buttocks but tugging him to her just the same.

"Do it," she urged.

He pushed in a little, the gasp "Fuck, Sansa," bursting from his lips before he could stop it. Tight, warm, amazing, all that was his wife. His little bird. Soft and slippery in her intimate embrace of his manhood.

She groaned with discomfort.

"Does it hurt?"

"A little," she winced. He knew it was a lie.

"Try to relax." The heat in his blood made it so difficult to stop, to think, to be gentle, when all he wanted was to ram in and keep ramming until he'd release into her.

"I'm trying," she whimpered in a choked voice not far from a sob.

"Shh," he shushed her. "Do you want me to stop?"

She pursed her lips and shook her head.

"I'll go slow," he promised with a kiss and she gave a stiff little nod.

He nudged forward and back, barely even moving, allowing her to get used to the feeling. His cock was inescapably bigger than the fingers she'd had inside her earlier. She groaned and gasped and grabbed at his upper arms, but she didn't ask him to stop.

"You feel so good, little bird," he hissed, lost, and a quick smile broke her grimace of pain for a moment.

He started going deeper, slowly. She groaned louder and bucked away from him, her eyes shot wide and she gave a loud, shocked moan. He'd bumped against her maiden's vail.

She was trembling beneath him, her eyes as wide as saucers.

"That's your maidenhead." She looked shocked. "Are you frightened?" She shook her head. Another lie. "Do you want me to stop?" Another, more stubborn shake. "Fine, but I need you to relax. Do you trust me?" She nodded fervently but panted too fast to speak.

"Shh," he murmured softly and leaned in to kiss her, moving slowly from her lips to her face and neck. "I'm here, little bird," he crooned against her neck. "My beautiful, perfect little bird." His hands sought out her hair, combing and caressing it with his thick, gentle fingers. Slowly the tension left her body, her breathing slowed down, and the frantic clutch of her snatch on his cock eased a tiny fraction. He caressed her cheek then, and pushed. Sansa screamed when he tore into her and he quickly covered her mouth with his hand. No need letting Lesira and their neighbours hear more than they had to.

Sansa had curled up under him and was hanging onto him, shivering, sobbing against his shoulder.

"Want me to pull out?" he forced himself to ask. Torn between lust and guilt over hurting his little bird, both feelings just as scorching.

"No," she gasped. "Just... don't move."

Minutes passed as she squirmed in discomfort under him, trying in vain to ease the pain. She had lain back down, pulling him down with her, not ready to let him see her face yet. When her trembling finally lessened and stopped, he turned his head and she allowed him to kiss his way down to her lips. She looked at him now.

"I'm sorry," she breathed, and before he had recovered from the shock of those words whe went on. "I wanted to be better for you." And there were the tears again, and the trembling, and the sobs.

"No, no, no, no," he whispered in a hurry and took her face in his hands. "You're perfect, little bird," he whispered and kissed her trembling lips until they stilled.

"Really?" she whined.

He found her gaze and smiled, though he knew he looked only the more horrible for it. "Really."

"I just... I've dreamt of this for so long. And I want you so much."

"Sansa," he said earnestly. "There will be other nights. Nights when it doesn't hurt. We can stop this here. We don't have to do anything more tonight."

Sandor started to pull out, but she wrapped her arms around his back and gasped. "Don't go." He looked at her, puzzled. "I want to try again."

He frowned. He'd grown softer inside her during the pause, but felt the blood rush back into him when she cupped his cheek and smiled.

"It'll still hurt," he warned.

"I'm not afraid."

"I'll start slow. And you will promise to tell me to stop if it's too much." She smiled and nodded.

Braced for it now, Sansa opened her thighs a bit further and wrapped her fingers around her husband's thick upper arms, those arms in which she knew she was always, always safe.

When he started to move, she couldn't help it that her face cringed or that her breath came in laboured grunts as she tried to accept and endure the pain. Yet while it still hurt, it didn't hurt too much. She wanted this, and wanted it now, to be joined with her husband, to have him as close as he could be, to have him on her and in her and around her all at the same time. She could see – and feel – that without the pain there would be pleasure in this, in the fullness, the friction, the heat of him, and the flesh of her.

"Sandor, please," she found herself whimpering when he was thrusting faster and grunting louder.

"Not much longer now," he huffed and she felt with every part of her how close he was to coming undone, how he was trying to hang on, and how he failed. His thrusts became rougher, more frantic. They were hard and painful, and she clutched at his arms and clenched her teeth in order not to scream out her pain. Minutes and minutes of it it felt, though it was scarcely no more than seconds. Then, finally, he lost it.

"I love you, little bird," he grunted, and started jerking. "Oh, Sansa. Seven bloody hells!" The last was a beastly roar and Sandor shuddered over her, this teeth bared in a soundless snarl as if he was in agony.

Then he crashed down beside her and closed his eyes as he caught his breath and recovered.

"Gods, Sansa," he grunted when he was finally able to turn his head to look at her.

She felt her power then, and flashed him a devious grin. The fiercest swordsman she knew and so brought down by her. Woman's weapons indeed. 

She crawled closer to him and leaned her head on his chest. His arm wrapped around her and she watched him sleep while the curious feeling of his seed seeping out of her made her giggle in the dark.

It would hurt in the morning, she could tell, but it would be the sweetest pain she'd ever felt, she knew.

"When can we try again?" she whispered eagerly.

"You'll be the death of me, girl," was the spent man's sleepy reply.


End file.
